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Along the St. Lawrence

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 3, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 38.

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Along the St. Lawrence

By Jean Vuilleumier

FOLLOWING our Quebec camp meeting at Lennoxville, seven colporteurs, divided into two companies,—four young women and three men,—started to sell a French book in the counties south of the St. Lawrence. This book is the first issued by the new press at the Eastern Canadian Missionary Seminary. It is a free translation or adaptation from “The World’s Crisis,” and is entitled “La Crise du Monde.”
If we are to send the gospel of the kingdom to every corner of this beautiful but priest-ridden province, savoring a good deal of the provincial France of the seventeenth century, this is a step in the right direction. By means of colporteurs, possibly resident district colporteurs, we may aim at reaching all this territory in a comparatively short time; whereas it might take a hundred years to do this work by preaching, if preaching could be resorted to as a rule.
In this way, by means of frequent visits with well-adapted and well-graded publications, prejudice and bigotry will be broken down, and the field will be prepared for the living preacher, not only in large centers, but also in the smaller cities and towns.
In Montreal we have a good circle of friends in the various churches, not excluding the Catholic Church; but either the reaping time has not come or the reaper has not appeared. Some of the leading members of the French Protestant churches attend our Sunday meetings from time to time, and are reading our publications.
On Christmas Day I preached a sermon in the French Salvation Army Hall, connecting the first advent of Christ with the second; and the same day I was asked to present our views on the trumpets and Armageddon in the home of Professor Bieler, D. D., whose wife is a daughter of D’Aubigné, the well-known Swiss historian of the Reformation.
My attendance of the French pastoral meetings will, I hope, bear fruit in time, and it is already opening doors for us. In the course of the discussion following the reading of the paper for the day, I have had the opportunity of introducing such subjects as Bible hygiene, the new earth, creation versus evolution, the Sabbath versus Sunday, the infallible Bible versus higher criticism. When I challenged the meeting on the Sabbath question, one minister remarked that as no one had taken up my challenge, he must therefore conclude that perhaps the Seventh-day Adventists are right in their position on this subject. The chairman took occasion to speak kindly of our work and to bid us Godspeed.
Having been requested to present a paper for the March (1916) meeting, I prepared an extensive essay on the second coming of Christ. In concluding, I quoted from a sermon preached in The Hague, Holland, in 1830, by the historian D’Aubigné. (His true name was J. H. Merle; D’Aubigné was his wife’s name, a descendant of the distinguished French Huguenot, Agrippa D’Aubigné.) Here is the quotation, made doubly interesting from the fact that D’Aubigné’s son-in-law, Professor Bieler, was present when it was read:—
“Yes, O earth! now polluted with injustice and drenched with blood! abode of unrest, revolution, and distress! upon thee, some day, shall peace, righteousness, and the glory of our God reign. I know it, for the Word of truth declares it; and the heavens and the earth shall pass away, but this Word shall never pass away. And this day is not far, and perhaps mine eyes shall behold it.”
The remarks which followed the reading, and in which eight ministers took part, were friendly and appreciative.
Another sphere of activity has been the columns of the French weekly L’Aurore (the Dawn), started just fifty years ago, under circumstances similar to those in which Elder James White began the publication of Present Truth. Thefounder, a school-teacher, Mr. L. E. Rivard, is still living. The paper is a union organ for the Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Methodist, and the Anglican Churches and missions in Canada and New England. In this paper I have a good opportunity of treating the papal question, the second coming of Christ, and various phases of present truth.
Though about to leave Montreal to take up teaching in the French department at the Oshawa (Ontario) school, I do not feel that I am really leaving this field, to which my family and I have become endeared. I shall endeavor from headquarters to fit up soldiers and prepare munitions for the battle field, while stronger and more aggressive warriors shall take my place at the front.
JEAN VUILLEUMIER.